Are my college friends useless?
Going into my last year, got an FT offer that I'm very happy with.
Friends have never really ever had goals (just like to hang out, smoke/drink, no real conversation other than talking about others or sports and things of that nature) and would constantly alienate/resent me after my previous spring semester due to me not really giving a shit about what they were doing cause I was pretty focused on wrapping up that sem with solid grades and excelling in my SA gig.
Talked to my older cousin and some others and they pretty much think that I'm wasting my time with these people since they still have the mindset of what freshmen would have to general life and expectations of themselves. How do you guys feel about this? Think they're useless as well?
Edit: Think some people are getting the wrong take on my post. As I mentioned below, I seemed to be alienated due to being busy and things of that sort. General conversation became hostile for no reason, etc.
Might be time to find some new friends who share common goals. That said, not every single one of your friends needs to be a striver, and you might value these "useless" friends later on in life - they might get their act together, or you might simply appreciate them more a few years post-grad. Don't dump them, just find other people to also spend time with.
You're definitely not wrong but its not just about their drive but rather how if someone is doing something good with their time, they are alienated for not "following the herd" which I find to be a pretty "toxic" trait holistically as I've seen that turn over from just basic hangouts to a general conversation being a little hostile. Even heard from some others that certain people were making excuses about me seeing myself as "too good cause of that big internship" (verbatim btw) even though I barely spoke about it..
I just feel over other things, jealousy has no place in a friendship and would only result in more of what I've mentioned.
Even if they’re just joking about the “too good bc of internship”, that would rub me the wrong way. It sounds like you and your college buddies don’t share the same set of values.
I have spoken about this before, but I keep in touch with almost nobody from high school. One guy I keep in touch with was a year older and now works in IB and I used to hoop with him. Follow a few guys on insta I grew up with but that’s it and don’t actually talk to them.
From college, I’ve got a few friends but not many I keep in touch with. Best friends I had in college that I hung out with the most I don’t even talk to anymore as all we did was drink. Arguably my best friend now I didn’t hang out with too much in college as he wasn’t as “cool” as my other buddies, but we value working hard and have stayed in contact.
Its ok to have friends who aren’t hardo’s. A very close friend of mine I met a long ago on twitter as we both played the same sport. We’ve kept in contact for a almost decade and have met up. We hold the same values, and he’s sort of a big brother to me. Work hard, keep your word, and be a good person.
The beauty of friendship is you can pick and choose who you spend time with. Life is too short to feel beholden to old friendships that do you no good. Not to get all philosophical, but the positive feedback loop is real. Surround yourself with positivity and you will inherently become a more positive individual.
You know when you have a good stretch at work and are able to knock out all your deliverables? Or say you’ve been feeling good at the gym and able to hit all your goals for a time period? You know how powerful compound interest is - apply that principal to everyday life, and what you’ll have accomplished 20 years from now will make you say wow.
if you are going to dump your friends, the real reason should be for what you spoke about here, NOT based on what you wrote in the OP, imo.
it's understandable to drop friends who would alienate you for not being part of their "herd"/circle because yes, that not only makes anyone feel bad, but is somewhat abusive because it's a control tactic. in a way, you are lucky that these people are honest about it enough to make this behavior clear to your face. i had to waste a lot of my schooling years putting up with twats who were too cowardly to be upfront with me about the same thing because they are, in short, a bunch of bitches. wasted so many years putting up with passive-aggressive bullshit that was a waste of everybody's time, including theirs, but especially mine. you do not want to waste your years like i did. there is no point, you come out with nothing.
with that said, and i'll preface that i am not saying this to scold or reprimand you, but to offer a different perspective; i think it's misleading and bad advice that i commonly hear to dump friends for "not having goals/the same goals" because they like to hang out, get a drink, spend time with each other, idle past time activities, and so on.
unless you live with them, no one really truly knows what is going through a friend's mind when it comes to what they want out of their lives or their careers.. or even something as simple as what's happening in their lives.
and even besides all that, relationships don't always have to be all-in. you can have perfectly healthy and fruitful relationships with people who are at different stages of their lives, focusing on different things, or enjoying each other's company for different reasons (including being friends to just have a good time together). there's nothing wrong with having a relationship with someone of that nature. frankly, it's pretty healthy to have a few people to be able to reliably hang out or chill with. as long as everyone involved understands the dynamic, it really should not be a source of concern.
people can and do have friends for any reason
EDIT: sorry looks like i'm beating a dead horse with this talking point, other comments have already touched on what i said.
You might be the problem. Are you constantly flexing on your friends? My friends from home are dumb as bricks and half are in the military because they could barely pass high school. They know I do banking and make hella bread but I almost never talk about that or school because they were never interested. I love hanging out with them and we go on trips every year together. Even though they’re way less ambitious than me I still love my boys. I’ve also made really good friends from undergrad that are also ambitious and in banking that I hang out with. I can’t see the whole relationship from just your post but remember there’s life outside of work and your career.
No.. thats the thing, as I said above, I don't. I like the guys but idk whats up with this whole thing man. I barelly even had time to speak over the summer let alone the end of the last semester. But whenever I did have time, I spent it w them. Its been since I got the SA offer that they like don't mess w me or something while I had my head down making sure Im still doing well.
Don’t burn the bridges. Never know what the future holds. You have no control over them torching their end of the bridge.
You’ll be surprised what you see of your peers after college. Go hards sometimes slow down. Lazy people get a great idea and do something crazy.
My old roommate was a world of Warcraft gamer 24/7 while drinking cheap light beer. I would have placed him as a lifer in the stock room of Walmart. Then he got in crypto early. He’s traveling the world giving keynote speeches now worth millions.
Friends from spring break, most of whom took 5 years to graduate, have turned the partying around and now are on an even plane close to where I am.
The caboose of my b school class whom I would have bet would have ended up in jail launched a product that Kim K loves and has posted pictures of him hanging out with her and Kanye.
World is small and life is long. Don’t think that these leopard friends can’t/won’t change their spots.
I don't intend to and love your take btw. I just was kinda lost as per my current situation. In hindsight, I don't mind them overall cause its a long friendship
Was in a similar spot to OP and agree with this. Most people wake up once they’re out of college and into the real world
Bro ngl it sounds like they have a bad case of crab in the bucket mentality. If they are like this at you now for securing a good job imagine what it's like in a few years when you're earning way more than them.
This has been the hardest thing for me to figure out tbh. I'm honestly fine with people teasing me about stuff, so long at the end of the day it comes from a good place. But I think only time can tell true intentions. No way someone super fake can keep up the act without slipping up and revealing themselves.
Yeah agree. One of my closest friends from school got rejected from the school I went to and had to settle for a much worse school and over time I just sensed resentment build up till it reached a point where half of the stuff I would say I couldn't talk to him about it (e.g. careers, future plans, college life). Our personalities then just kinda evolved in opposite directions and the friendship fizzled out from there.
In life you can't be friends with everyone and not everyone is gonna be a good friend anyway. It's just one of the things you have to accept is always going to happen because not everyone is on the same life path as you so you shouldn't let them hold you back.
I think the best way to evaluate it is think if you met this person for the first time now would you become friends with them?
I'm a big believer in not burning bridges unless you absolutely have to (i.e. toxic, genuinely bad person) so I would say just let things be for now and ride out your last year.
Perhaps branching out and meeting others is the best way to go right now. Having like minded friends is always preferable. You can simply relate to one another better.
Keep in mind that everyone ages at a different pace. Having friends who are not so focused on career goals CAN be a good thing. It serves as a reminder that there is more to life than just the grind. Might be a good way to help relax.
Just my two cents tho
Aristotle spoke about friendship in Book VII of The Nicomachean Ethics. You have friends of utility, pleasure, and goodness.
Friendships of Utility are like friends of convenience. Like the people on your team at work that you see every day, or the kids in your class, or the people that grew up around you and went to your school. You're friends with them because it's convenient for you because you just happen to be around each other, and you both benefit somehow from the relationship.
Friendships of Pleasure are the friends you party with. You only do things that make you guys feel good. You just have fun with them.
Friendships of Goodness are your true friends. The ones that come along once or twice in a lifetime, if that. They love and respect you for who you truly are, they see you for you, and you see them for them. It doesn't matter if you're an MD at a BB and they're a garbage collector that you see once per year, they are your friend because you love and respect them on a human level.
It sounds like your college friends are friends of utility and pleasure, and the utility and pleasure in the friendship has ran its course. There's nothing wrong with that. People are going to come in and out of your life like seasons, and you're going to go in and out of their lives. It doesn't make you guys bad people, that's just the nature of life. The things that held your friendship together are changing. It's going to happen over and over in your life. You're going to find that if you stop calling people like this then they'll stop calling you, and they'll drift away. You guys don't have to be enemies, but their lives, choices, wants, and needs will take them to different places. You guys won't even recognize each other if you bump into each other in a few years.
Beautifully said man, thank you for this. :)
with all due offence, you sound like a real prestige elitist cuck and i think your friends would be happier off without you. All of us here can get decent jobs and you don't see us calling our "friends" losers.
Yeah I feel the same way about women. I don't date women that went to shit schools (non T20s) and are now working stupid service jobs (bartending, waitress, barista, etc).
Even if you're hot, unless you have serious family money (100MM+), you shouldn't be a degenerate decadent useless burden on society. A proper lady should have gone to a respectable protestant institution and pursue a living in finance, law, politics or medicine.
cant imagine why you're single
Very relatable, have had similar experiences (mostly with high school friends, rather than college). TLDR: my advice is don’t burn the bridges, but find other friends.
If people are jealous of your success (which is what those comments imply), a real friendship is difficult anyway - you’ll always have to watch what you say (seems like you already do this). So the easiest way to deal with this imo is to find more like-minded people at your school and hang out less with your current friends (without actually starting an argument or anything, just slowly phasing them out a bit). That way, you keep in touch but also find a group where you don’t feel out of place due to your ambition. And you never know, they may turn their lives around (as a pp mentioned).
>How do you guys feel about this? Think they're useless as well?
You already think your friends are "useless"... I think your friends need to find new friends, and you need to reflect on how you think about, and treat other people. I'm guessing they already know how you think.
You'll soon discover that talking about sports / shooting the shit over a couple of beers is actually a pretty crucial part of networking / building professional relationships.
Oh for sure, thats not my point. I love doing all that and shooting the shit with them but things have changed and I really have no idea why. Just have a look above to some of my replies for some insight
I hate to use the word "useless," but you should definitely find different people to spend your time with who have similar goals and ambitions as you. If your friends are giving you a hard time for trying to build your success then they are definitely not the best influence and may bring you down if you keep spending time around them.
The bigger question that you should ask yourself is why were you attracted to these “useless” people in the first place?
I am still close with all of my best friends from college, and everyone has found a high level of success (even from a semi-target).
The way you talk about your "friends" kinda says a lot about you. Friends are people you enjoy spending time with and you trust to have your back. It's not about who is going to make the most money down the line. I would never want my entire circle to be bankers. If your friends "resent/alienate" you, then they weren't your friends or you are the asshole lmao
I think this is one of those situations where you don't have to burn bridges, but it can help exploring different interests and meeting different kinds of people, ones that wouldn't necessarily cross paths with your current crew. You don't necessarily have to make them all meet each other if you're not comfortable with that (ref:
), but it is nice to have different people you can be with depending on whatever.I always keep a few dipshits in the rotation because if all my friends were Type A hardos like the people I work with I'd off myself.
Not everything in life is a transaction, sometimes I just want to kick back with a buddy and some beers and have the most idiotic conversation of my life.
absolutely ^ its just too bad some of them get intimidated through comparison even though I could not give less of a fuck where they are in life
Received advice lately that really hit home. “What we are doing is not average.” I’m in the same boat with some of my friends who are content not doing much for the foreseeable future.
You sound like a dickhead. No wonder they don’t like you
ofc let them go lmao
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